I hate to be the one to break it to you, but high end skis make tradeoffs which are harmful to beginner or intermediate level skiers... also there's sorta no thing as "best ski". what you'd want for high speed bombing double blacks is going to be different from off piste or moguls or snow park fun.... double also, skis wear out. Depending on who you want to believe it's as low as 20-30 days. Which, granted the average skier is at something like 5 days a year. but if that's you... triple also?

As for how this relates to audio compression, in particular in the context of 2012. you are making a tradeoff of storage size and decompression cost. Maybe that doesn't matter to you, but maybe it either did in 2012 or still does.